


Of Whiskey and Cigarettes

by Kattlupin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Boys In Love, Fluff, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Moving In Together, POV Sirius Black, Sirius Black & Lily Evans Potter Friendship, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2020-11-22 18:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20878373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kattlupin/pseuds/Kattlupin
Summary: On the eve of Remus moving in, Sirius confesses his fear of mucking it up at 2am with Lily over whiskey and cigarettes.





	Of Whiskey and Cigarettes

It’s the eve of the day I’ve been hoping for, practically begging for, over the last year. Two, if we’re going by the length of our relationship. Eight, if I’m really being honest with myself. For though Remus and I have only been together since the end of our sixth year, the truth is that I’ve loved him for much longer. I’ve loved him since the beginning. I just didn’t realize it. And instead of lying awake in anticipation, I’m wide awake in complete and utter fear that I am destined to fuck this up. 

Perhaps a smoke and a late-night Fire Whiskey will help calm me down enough to finally get to sleep. Hopefully James and Lily didn’t finish it off in their celebration of finally moving in together as well. Not that it’ll be any different for them. Lily’s been practically living here since they got engaged anyways. And to think James complained all through seventh year about Remus and I needing to perfect our silencing charms.

As I leave my bedroom, the faint light in the kitchen alerts me to the fact that I’m not the only one awake. Which is surprising. I’m the only one that technically isn’t moving their belongings tomorrow. I have the easy day. All I need to do is save my energy and shag the moonlight out of Moony when he gets here. To christen the flat as ours and ours alone. Not that we haven’t already done that. But for the first time in our relationship, we’ll be able to be completely alone. No silencing charms or dorm-mates/flatmates around to refer to us as ponces. 

“Can’t sleep?” Lily greets me as I enter the kitchen, her hair in a loose ponytail and James’s old quidditch jersey hanging on her shorter and thinner frame. It makes me wonder in my head what Remus would look like wearing nothing but my jersey as well. I pocket that visual for later. If a smoke and whiskey don’t work, a proper wank hopefully will. 

She’s sitting on one of the mismatched wooden chairs around the slightly scratched up kitchen table, furniture James and I picked up at a local resale shop. He’d argued with me at the time. He wanted us to grab something that was at least a matching set, hell-bent on impressing Lily with his ability to pick out furniture. But I knew if I was ever going to get Remus to move in with me, he was going to need to feel at ease here, and fancy matching furniture sets were not something that was going to make Remus feel at ease. 

“Nope,” I reply, grabbing a glass out of the cabinet. I take a quick glance and notice she already has one in front of her, the Fire Whiskey sitting like a centerpiece in the middle of the table, a half-full ashtray beside it. I take the seat across from her, one knee pulled up to my chest, foot resting on the seat and the other hooked around the leg of the chair. “What about you?” 

“Not even a wink.” She downs what’s left in her glass and I pour her another after I fill up my own. 

“What’s eating you?” I ask, a cigarette between my lips. I snap my fingers before it and inhale, pulling in a long drag. I offer the pack to Lily, she takes one and does the same.

“Thanks,” she says as she exhales. “I’m just nervous about tomorrow I guess.”

“So it’s not James’s snoring keeping you awake? Because I know from years of experience that he can rattle a room.” 

“Well, it’s that too,” she says taking another drag of her cigarette. “And I part of me thinks I’m nuts for tying myself to someone who makes that much noise while sleeping. I thought the perks of one sleeping like the dead was that they did, in fact, sleep like the dead. Silently.”

I smile at her joke around a sip of my whiskey. “James doesn’t sleep like the dead. He sleeps like someone who’s never had a worry in his life. Remus and I have always envied it.”

“So what about you, why are you awake?” She quirks up an eyebrow at me. “Too excited about your Moony’s arrival?”

“No… Well yes, but..”

“Nervous,” she supplies for me.

I nod my head sheepishly and take another drag from my cigarette. 

“What on earth do you have to be nervous about? Remus adores you.”

“I could ask you the same question. James has worshipped you since the moment he met you. You can do no wrong in his eyes.” 

And it’s true. Much like myself with Remus, James has been completely enthralled by Lily since they first met on the Hogwarts Express. Sure she hated him from the beginning, but the arrogant bastard is persistent if nothing else. Plus James had the hetero advantage, as Remus and I like to call it, that allowed him space and freedom to identify, pursue and declare his feelings more easily. A luxury that Remus and I were not afforded. We had to come to terms with our feelings more secretly. Well, I did at least. Remus, for his part, never had much of a choice. Whether it was his lycanthropy or the fact that he knew he was gay from a much younger age, he was far more in-tune with what it was he wanted. His problem has always been that he’s never believed that he deserves it. Deserves me. No matter how many times I try to assure him he does and that it’s me who is the lucky one for having him.

“True,” she relents. “It’s just, we’re young, we’re engaged and there’s a war going on. So much can go wrong you know?”

“Yeah well, James obviously isn’t worried about it,” I tease and as if to emphasize my point, a hilariously loud snore reverberates around the flat from what will no longer be James’s bedroom. As of tomorrow, it’ll be transformed into Remus’s library. A place for him to keep his books and research for the order in peace. 

“Obviously not.” Lily rolls her eyes and polishes off her whiskey. I pour us each another one. “So honestly Sirius, what’s the problem? You can’t tell me you’re getting cold feet after all these years.”

“No, it’s not that. Not really.” I pause and light another cigarette, exhaling slowly. “It’s just, what if I fuck it up? What if Remus realizes that I’m a mistake?”

“Sirius, you can’t tell me that you honestly believe that.”

“What? That there’s a chance that Remus will realize that I’m a complete fuck up? That he deserves better?” I take another drag. “Of course I do. It’s just a matter of time before he comes to his senses.”

“Rubbish. Remus loves you. He always has.”

I want to believe her. I should believe her. Lily, James, and Peter have all tried to tell me this. Remus, of course, has told me this. Even McGonagall tried telling me once, on the day she brought me the news of Uncle Alphard’s passing. Bringing with it his last Will and Testament proclaiming me the heir to his estate. It was a fraction of what I would have received if I would have remained a proper member of the Noble House of Black, but it was a significant enough amount to purchase this flat and to ensure a future for myself. A future that I want to share with Remus. 

Much to my embarrassment, I had a bit of a meltdown in my head of house’s office that day. It was a long time coming but I hadn’t expected it to happen in front of her. It was in the last month of sixth year, nearly one year after my disownment, two years after realizing that I was in love with one of my best friends. A love that I had convinced myself was never going to be requited. Remus was good. He deserved better than me, he still does. But at that moment in time, when I was at my breaking point, convinced I didn’t deserve the too few niceties that the world had awarded me, Professor McGonagall was the one who assured me that I did. She also pointed out that maybe using a few sickles of the money to take Remus on a date might be a good way to distract me.

I looked at her incredulously, completely taken aback by the bluntness of her statement. To which she just replied, “ _ Oh seriously Mr. Black, don’t pretend like you being in love with Mr. Lupin isn’t obvious to everybody but Mr. Lupin. _ ” The slight tug at the corners of her lips was the first time I’d ever felt like what I was feeling was okay, and it was enough to make me take her advice. The following weekend I took Remus to Hogsmeade, and after a day of meandering around with no pranks or other distractions around us, I’d managed to kiss him behind the Three Broomsticks after a meal and a few butterbeers. Even now, two years later, I can still remember the way that first kiss felt, soft and slow. The way it tasted, sticky sweet and distinctly Remus. A taste I would get more acquainted with over the next two years.

“It’s not rubbish,” I tell Lily. “Remus is bound to regret this.”

“Regret what exactly? It’s not like the two of you haven’t lived together before.”

“Sharing a dorm at Hogwarts is different.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.” I slam the rest of my drink in emphasis. “At Hogwarts we had James and Peter as a buffer. We had house elves making us our meals. We had the shrieking shack and the forbidden forest for full moons. We had classes and a whole castle to explore.” I pour myself another drink and top off Lily’s. “Now, we’ll have this tiny two bedroom flat and my shitty cooking skills to live off of.”

Lily laughs and gestures towards the pack of cigarettes between us, silently asking if she can have one. I nod my head and she takes one and lights it. 

“If memory serves, James and Peter have been more of a nuisance on you two than they’ve been a help.” Lily points at me with her lit cigarette between her fingers, then continues, “I know for a fact that even though you can’t cook, Remus can.” She takes a sip of her whiskey. “Though I know you all made it better the last two years, Remus hated that shack and everything that it represented. And as far as the whole castle to explore goes, you’re in London Sirius, you have an entire city to go on adventures together. Plus this flat is cozy. Remus is going to love it here.”

“You think so?”

“Sirius, I know so. Remus is so completely in love with you. You have to know that right?”

I shrug and stub out my cigarette in response. It’s not as if I don’t know that Remus loves me, he tells me all the time. Hell, he was the first person to ever say it to me. But perhaps it’s that reason that makes me think I’m undeserving of his love in the first place. When you spend your whole life being denied love by the people who were supposed to care for you, you end up doing and believing all sorts of crazy things throughout your life to make up for it. And apparently being completely convinced that Remus is going to realize what an absolute mistake I am, is one of them.

And over the years, I’ve sure as shit done plenty of things to reinforce that idea. There was the prank with Snape that almost split all of us. The numerous sordid affairs I’d carried on with half the girls in not just Gryffindor Tower but Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw too, plus that one Slytherin who we’ve all promised to never speak of again. There was the fact that I fled to the Potter’s then refused to come out of their guest room turned my room until Remus arrived, forcing him to end the only vacation he’d ever been on early, even if it was only to Cornwall.

That right there should have been a major clue to everyone that something was growing between me and Remus. Though James has been my brother in everything but blood, Remus has always been something else. When he arrived at the Potter’s, all tanned skinned and lightly freckled, my head and heart slowed down at just the sight of him, as if he was anchoring me back into the present. Stopping me from wildly spinning out of control. I had asked him why it was they didn’t love me. And he responded by grabbing my hand, our bodies sat close together on the floor, and said,  _ “I can’t imagine why they didn’t. I find you to be impossible not to love.”  _

Never in my life had I heard someone express love to me, not even Uncle Alphard, though I guess he may have shown it in other ways. Just not ways that I was able to recognize. To hear Remus express it, well it cracked me open, and for the first time in my life, I let myself cry in the presence of another. 

“I know he does,” I finally respond. 

“Look, Sirius, I know things haven’t exactly been easy for you. But they haven’t been easy for Remus either. Did it ever occur to you that the two of you are exactly what the other needs?” She looks over the edge of her glass as she finishes her sentence, then takes a slow sip.

“What? Like two puzzle pieces fitting together kind of tripe?”

“Well, not that kind of cheesy,” Lily smirks around her cigarette. “But you have to admit, there is something poetic about the two of you. The moon and the star.”

I light another cigarette and contemplate her words. It’s not an original thought. I’d been using the cosmic coincidences of the night sky to explain my deep feelings for Remus for years in my head. I’ve just never bothered to voice them aloud. “How Shakespearean of you, Lily Evans.”

“Lily Potter soon enough,” she corrects. 

“Lily Potter,” I repeat with a raise of my glass.

“In all fairness Sirius, I get it. This falling in love thing is complicated and scary. But you don’t have anything to worry about. In Remus’s eyes, you’re perfect.”

I let out a sigh and run my fingers through my hair. I’m not the perfect one. He is. Remus has always been perfect, even in the places where he’s marred. I told him so the first time I ever saw him naked. He didn’t want to show me. He’d spent the previous six years changing in the loo and a separate room inside the shrieking shack away from us, not just to hide his scarred and torn body from us, but to save us from witnessing the horror of his transformations. He didn’t let me see him transform until after we left Hogwarts he no longer had a choice. It was either let me be there with him in the open forest of the northern territories of Scotland where we apparated to or go alone. Even still, when James and Peter are with us, he makes them wait a half a kilometer away. I’ve never given them the details, but watching Remus transform every month is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. Not because of what he turns into, but witnessing the person you love most in the world experience something so horrifying and then have to live with not just the knowledge that they’ll have to do this forever, but that they’ve been doing it since they were four is heartbreaking. Remus has dealt with enough. Having to deal with me being an inevitable fuck up shouldn’t be on his ever growing list of problems.

He’d always worried about it, his future. What it would hold, what he could do. And I know a part of him had held back on the chance of love to avoid complicating things that were already complicated by adding another entity into the mix. And of course, me being me, I pushed my way in. Forcing myself into his life, into his hopes and dreams, and into his body. He’s already sharing it with another being, I’m surprised every time we make love that he allows me inside as well.

And that’s the thing. I’ve let him see inside of me too. Remus has seen me at my most raw, my most vulnerable and insecure. Things that no one, not even James has seen of me. I’ve become so dependent on Remus to fill in the holes of who I am, that I’m terrified of what I’d become without him holding me together. Perhaps that’s the one thing lycanthropy has going for it. When you rip yourself apart thirteen times a year, you become adept at picking up the pieces and putting things back together.

“He’s the perfect one,” I tell Lily, smoke slowly escaping my parted lips. 

Lily offers me a soft smile and raises her glass. “I’ll agree with you on that. We’d be hard-pressed to find anyone more perfect than Remus Lupin.”

I raise my glass and drink with her, my own soft smile tugging at my lips. 

“So, Sirius Black, do you feel better about this decision?”

“Having Remus move in with me? It’s likely the best decision I’ve ever made. But the question still remains, will he feel the same?”

“You’re hopeless,” Lily laughs. “And I’m tired. I’ll see you in the morning.” She rises from her chair and walks over to me. She places a light kiss onto my cheek at the exact moment a knock comes from the door. “I wonder who that could be?”

I watch her sashay away into James’s bedroom and I walk to open the door. It’s Remus, eyes tired, lips slightly chapped and a box in his hands. I let him in. He places the box on the kitchen table. 

“You’re a little earlier than I expected,” I say as I wrap my arms around his narrow shoulders.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says into the crook of my neck.

“Too excited about the reality of living with me,” I tease.

“No,” Remus laughs, his breaths feather-light against my skin. “Too nervous that you’ll change your mind once you have me in here.”

“Never,” I assure him. “You’re it for me, Remus. You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”

“Really?” he asks earnestly, pulling away and looking up at me with sleepy yet hopeful eyes. 

“Yes Moony,” I sigh, leaning down slightly and pressing my forehead to his.

“I love you, you know?” he says, like it's the first time he’s ever said it.

“I know. I love you too.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos are appreciated and come find me on tumblr @kattlupin 💛


End file.
